Laptops for Christmas?

I've always thought laptops have too many options and personal choices for gifting. Tablets, however, are really easy for a 3rd party to purchase. I mean, sure there are different capacities and such, but for the most part, there's only a few options. And someone that wants an iPad will say so instead of "a tablet would be nice". You can buy an iPad in like 10 clicks. Laptops, it's like, well, how much ram? HDD? do you like chicklet keys? do they need to be backlit? What size screen? Resolution? Do you need a number pad? Is on board graphics okay, or do you need a discrete card? etc...

Unlimited is just a word... and so is Customer.

'unlimited' is a word... it's a word that means I don't have to care how much I'm using or worry that I'm going over my limit. If unlimited plans go away, then the word unlimited needs to go with them. I'm okay with that as long as they don't call 4.5GB == unlimited.

Isn't this normal?

All the Co-loc's I've been too have had "mantraps". I always figured this was a normal thing in most areas. Even the one we have here onsite has the same thing (though it looks like a hallway, as there are two entrances and two exists to the Data Center, all the doors can be locked remotely effectively trapping that person inside the hallway.

Timeline?

As much as I hear people complain about Timeline, I really don't think they can equate that directly with these results. A lot of other things have changed during the same time period (as often does in the online world of fast code iterations). I know personally, I like Timeline... but Facebook has been horrible with it's support, especially in the mobile arena. Which is almost inexcusable considering it's been announced multiple times as their focus and biggest area of potential growth.

Re: @AC

Exactly. I have been stuck with ATI devices at work for years and have had nothing but issue after issue with them in Linux. Meanwhile at home I have had a slew of nothing but nVidia cards just because of their near flawless support for the Linux community. Thanks to them actually coming out with drivers for Linux on a regular basis, I've been running 3D accelerated X windows setup for at least 8 years now.

This has already been in some of the sets!

I've been looking at Bravia sets (specifically the KDL-40EX620) for the last few weeks and have found that a number of them already come with this... But as is mentioned above, they don't come with camera/microphone. They expect you to buy the "CMU-BR100", which would be totally awesome and I'd do it... if it wasn't for the $150 price tag for a 720p @ 22fps web cam. For that much it should be full 1080p @ 30fps... (I'd even take PAL's 25fps or a the average movie's 24fps).

It's not the phone that's expensive.

To tell the truth, I'd have to say the reason why the "normal people" don't have iPhones isn't because of the cost of the iPhone itself. On a plan, it's $199... or $49 around here if you want a 3GS. (That's the "Cheap" phone already, last year's model. No need for another one. ) The big price is the on going service charge of internet and text messages. On AT&T it means, take your normal plan and add $30+ a month to it. (For the cheap setup, the one I've got is $30 (unlimited net) +$20 (unlimited text), luckily my company reimburses me for it). $30 * 24 months (2 year contract) is $720! and the one I've got is $1200!

Thing is, this is basically the standard AT&T pricing. Verizon's isn't much different. Doesn't matter what smart phone you get, you're going to be dropping a lot of money either way, and not for the phone.

I switched years ago

I've been running 64bit Vista/7/Ubuntu for the better part of 5 years now and haven't noticed any issues with drivers or support. Core2Duo's were 64bit, even the cheaper Celeron or Pentium-D's based on the same core have been out for a while. There's no reason in this day and age to still run a 32 Bit OS. and I get annoyed every time I see a 64bit capable laptop with 4GB of RAM ship with Windows7 or Vista 32bit.

I will have to say that Windows XP 64bit sucked because of the driver support. But luckily Vista was released 64bit at the get-go which pushed a lot of manufacturers to come up with 64bit drivers. 7 continues that trend and offers even better 32bit compatibility modes in case you do run into the issue.

So...

How do you stop it. 'cause you don't really get solar winds blowing from your target unless it's another star.

So what this really should say is "Scientists estimate this craft will reach Pluto in 5 years and crash into its surface harder than an other human built craft has before." Which would be epic if we had a non-crashing camera out there to video it and upload it to youtube for us.

But what about all the other Tech?

What about all the other tech that goes out of it's way to talk over normal cellular frequencies to pull down everything from music to gps updates? What if all I want to do is stream pandora while I'm driving somewhere, that'd get blocked too, and I hate to point out that music can actually keep people awake and focused. Also, what about all the "Call Bob" MS Sync systems and built in hands free phone setups that are supposed to save lives and be indispensable? This seems like an entire industry is going to be fighting this one back.

Not that I care about voice communications while driving, I'd much rather the wife and kids just shut-up and let me drive, let alone the 20 min of talk time I use per month on my cell phone. Still, it's nice to have those 3G downloaded maps and songs.

Except that I/O doesn't always scale with spindles...

It's important to remember that more spindles doesn't always mean faster I/O, especially where low latency is concerned. Many of today's RAID-5/6 controllers wait for all spindles to respond back before reassembling the data packets after an I/O request. More spindles means more wait time and higher latency... while over all transfer rates are quick, things like web servers and Databases will do well to steer toward SSDs (or in the case of web servers, start running a large memcache)

Why?!

Why didn't Google just delete the data? Distributing the data just makes the whole thing worse! Delete the data, don't pass it off. This is like Germany is sanctioning the distribution of illegal data, which would be massively against the law in most, if not all, jurisdictions.

Because we can trust the German Government more than we can trust Google with the data?

Google: Take the drives out back and shoot them with Deer Slugs from close range. Video tape it. Throw it on youtube. Bump the news story on your servers. Do something that would make people actually trust you again. "Look, we did something wrong, so we're fixing that by getting rid of everything we illegally collected. <BAM!> Thanks for your time. We feel better that we got that off our chest."